Black Friday

by S. Hussain Zaidi

  During the riots of January 1993, Kutta was with Dossa when the latter received a call from Mustafa in Dubai. Salim could make out that Mustafa was desperate to send an arms consignment to Bombay through Mhasla. Dossa was reluctant for logistical reasons, but eventually agreed. Dossa’s landing agents Shabbir Qadri and Uttam Poddar were asked to organize the landing on 9 January, and Salim Kutta was deputed to supervise. In the dark of the night, they offloaded 300 silver ingots, about thirty wooden crates and a similar number of canvas bags. Salim surmised that the boxes contained AK-56s and magazines, while the canvas bags held RDX. The cargo was divided. Most of it was sent to Gujarat in trucks while the rest was deposited at the landing agent Qadri’s house at Raigad. Salim returned to Bombay. He later realized that Mustafa had not only sent arms and explosives to Mhasla and Dighi, but there had been other landings in Porbunder, Gujarat, organized by his landing agents Punju Mia and Farookh Lotta.

  Towards the end of January, Mohammed Dossa bought tickets to Dubai for Kutta and five others of the Arjun gang— Qayyum Sajni, Yusuf Batla, Shoaib Baba, Syed Qureishi and Ahmed Lambu. Mustafa organized the visas. In Dubai, they stayed at Mustafa’s office in Dera Towers for a couple of weeks. On one occasion, Mustafa took Salim to Dawood Ibrahim’s palatial bungalow. In his confession, Salim gave elaborate descriptions of the lavish house.

  He also described a meeting in Dawood’s house, attended by Chhota Shakeel, Salim Talwar, Ejaz Pathan, Haji Ahmed, Munna Abdullah, Mustafa and the five others of the Arjun gang. Dawood had spoken provocatively for about an hour about Hindus and their role in the demolition of the Babri Masjid and in the riots. He exhorted his listeners to rise and rebel against the tyrannical rule. He instructed Mustafa to collect the passports of those who wanted to participate in the action so that arrangements could be made to take them to Pakistan for training.

  Kutta was unwilling to go. However, the other members of the Arjun gang were enthusiastic. The five of them went to Islamabad for a week, and on their return, described how Pakistani officers had escorted them out of the airport without any formalities, how they were taken for training in one of several camps on a hillside, and how they were taken sightseeing after their training. They had met several other youths from Bombay in the training camps. They had been trained in handling AK-56s, hand grenades and making bombs. They told Salim that they had seen other camps at a distance where Bosnian Muslims were being prepared for the fight against the Serbs.

  The five men of the Arjun gang returned to Bombay, while Salim Kutta stayed on in Dubai. A few days later, on instructions from Mohammed Dossa, he went to Kathmandu to meet gold smugglers and then returned to Bombay. On the day of the blasts, he had been in Bombay but he had not participated in them.

  After the blasts, Salim realized that some of Dossa’s men who had been arrested had mentioned his name, and that the police were looking for him. He fled to Delhi, and from there to UP. He heard that he carried a prize of Rs 1 lakh on his head.

  He remained in touch with Dossa throughout, and continued to participate in his smuggling activities. Dossa would instruct him on where to go, and what to deliver. He also remained in touch with the Arjun gang, all members of which were still at large and working with Dossa. This last revelation was startling.

  Trained in modern warfare, skilled at staying in hiding for over five years, and led by an affluent man like Mustafa, the Arjun gang is capable of perpetrating another crime like the one that tore Bombay apart.

  Salim Kutta’s was only the third statement that linked Dawood Ibrahim to the blasts. The earlier two had been by Dawood Phanse and Usman Gani.

  ■

  Mohammed Kasam Lajpuria, better known as Mechanic Chacha, had been on the run for more than six-and-a-half years. He had been in Kathmandu for a while, and then in Dubai where Mohammed Dossa had ensured he was well looked after.

  Mechanic Chacha was on the list of proclaimed offenders in the blasts case. The list had now shrunk to thirty-three people, and their details were with the Interpol.

  In the early 1980s, when Dossa was serving his time at Bombay Central Prison, his cellmate had been Mechanic Chacha, who had also been arrested for smuggling. His boss then was Yusuf Patel. Dossa proposed that Chacha join him. Gradually, Chacha assumed more and more responsibility, supervising Dossa’s landing operations. When Dossa asked him to take delivery of arms and explosives, Chacha did not demur.

  The first landing of arms and RDX was on 9 January at Dighi. It was sent by Mustafa Majnun. Over a walkie-talkie, Chacha had coordinated the activities of Kutta and the Arjun gang. A part of the consignment was sent to Porbunder and Jamnagar. Mustafa had sent strict instructions. The Kalashnikov guns and RDX were neatly divided up. Some cartons were sent to Surat and Raipur, and the rest was concealed in safe houses in Bombay and Raigad. When the blasts happened on 12 March, Mechanic Chacha realized that some other don had upstaged his boss.

  The four years in Dubai had been good. Initially he had looked after Dossa’s business. Later he had started his own. Yet the fear of stalkers never left him. He was sure the Indian agencies knew all about him; it was just because he was in Dubai that they could not do anything about it. He knew that the bigger dons—Dawood Ibrahim, Tiger Memon and Mohammed Dossa— were beyond the arm of the law, but he knew that lesser people were always expendable.

  When Dossa asked him on 1 November 1999 to make a trip to Kathmandu, he felt a knot in his stomach. Kathmandu was no longer a haven for people like him. But then no place was truly safe. Taufiq Jaliawala had died on his way to perform Umrah in Saudi Arabia in June 1995 as his car was nearing Riyadh. It was allegedly an accident, but Chacha was not convinced.

  As he took the flight to Kathmandu on 4 November, he felt relieved to note that he had not been followed. The relief was shortlived. After the plane landed at Tribhuvan International Airport, and he cleared immigration, he found the CBI waiting for him. The IB had already called ahead of him and tipped off the necessary people. DSP A.K. Singh of the CBI had done the groundwork for Chacha’s welcome.

  Police records showed that Chacha was arrested in Raxaul, an entry-exit point on the porous Indo-Nepal border. He was flown to Delhi, and from there to Bombay where he was handed over to the STF officers. During the course of interrogation, Chacha confirmed what the investigators already knew, and added some new details. For example, when Memon’s consignment of explosives was to land at Shekhadi on 3 February, Dossa was supposed to have personally tipped off customs officials, while Chacha had alerted the then collector Bhardwaj about Memon’s 9 February Shekhadi consignment.

  16

  Retaliation

  The simmering rivalry between Chhota Rajan and Chhota Shakeel and its outcome for the city of Bombay is the stuff of gang lore. It was said that Rajan had got into Dawood’s disfavour for overspending on new recruits and other things. Gradually, the landing areas near Bombay over which he had influence were not used by Dawood. Also, Rajan received little booty for the killings he organized. Yet Rajan continued to remain loyal to Dawood, to the extent of defending him when Bal Thackeray chided the police for taking action against Hindu dons like Arun Gawli and Amar Naik. In an open letter carried in a city tabloid after the blasts, Rajan claimed that there were no communal divides in the D Company.

  The serial bombings with their communal bias had undermined Chhota Rajan’s belief. He saw this as an opportunity to establish himself as the patriotic don of the city, and reportedly vowed in 1997 to take on the traitor.

  Salim Kurla was recuperating in the special ward of Bellevue Nursing Home, Andheri, Bombay, on 21 April 1998. His friend Arif Cablewala had come to visit him.

  Two men entered the hospital. Their purposeful gait indicated that they knew where they wanted to go. They entered Kurla’s ward and pulled out their revolvers. Kurla and Cablewala died in the volley of the bullets.

  Builder Mohammed Jindran delighted in the fact that he had shared the same cell in jail as film star Sanjay Dutt. Since he had been rel
eased on bail on 16 November 1995, he had told this story many times.

  At 9.30 a.m. on 29 June 1998, Jindran was about to get into his car in front of his house in Khar, when he saw his neighbour Kiran Pandey walking towards him and paused to greet him. Before Pandey could reach him, two men who had been loitering nearby walked up to him and shot him at point-blank range. Jindran sustained four bullet injuries and slumped to the ground.

  As the gunmen turned to escape, they saw Kiran Pandey standing close to them, shocked into immobility. Pandey turned and ran for his life. The gunmen followed him into a garage, where Pandey slipped on the monsoon slush, and shot him.

  The proprietor of MK Builders, Majid Khan, was released on bail on 3 April 1995. He had heard about the murder of Kurla and Jindran and of attempts on the life of others accused in the blasts case. Khan had asked Shakeel Ahmed, another accused, to be his bodyguard.

  Around 12.30 p.m. on 1 March 1999, Khan was standing at the Nagpada Road junction outside Pahelvi Hotel, Bandra, when a motorcycle emerged from the bumper-to-bumper traffic and whizzed towards him. The pillion rider began spraying bullets indiscriminately. The target was Khan but also mown down were Ahmed, Khan’s business partner Nizam Khan, and an ice vendor Akram Rafi. The hail of bullets also injured a bystander, Mohammed Rafi, and a seven-year-old schoolgirl Sadika, returning home from coaching classes.

  The police were baffled at such indiscriminate gunfire; they could not even ascertain the exact number of bullets fired.

  It was alleged that it was Chhota Rajan who had managed to finish off two of the blasts accused—Khan and Ahmed—in one hit. The bloodstains on Bombay’s streets congealed into a definite pattern, spelling out a sinister message for the accused in the blasts case.

  Among those who narrowly escaped death were Ayub Patel— two unidentified men at Oshiwara fired five rounds at Patel but he managed to escape—and Salim Durrani, whose stalkers mistakenly killed another man, Shaikh Shabbir, in May 1998, who had been driving a car Durrani also drove. Sixteen bullets were pumped into Shaikh. Former Addl. CC Somnath Thapa walked into a trap when he responded to a telephone call at Hotel Rang Sharada, Bandra, on 18 August 1999. Two men opened fire at him at point-blank range. Thapa was critically injured but survived.

  Chhota Shakeel was furious with rage. If Dawood’s men failed to respond, it would mean loss of honour.

  Shakeel planned a daring operation. He, along with Rajan’s trusted aide Rohit Verma, kept tabs on Rajan’s movements in South-East Asia. On 15 September 2000 Rajan, using the alias Vijay Daman, moved to Bangkok from Kuala Lumpur. Shakeel’s men zeroed in on him at an apartment at 21 Sukhumvit Soi. The plan was to kidnap Rajan and get him to Karachi alive.

  When Shakeel’s men barged into the first-floor apartment and opened fire, Rajan jumped into the bedroom and closed the door, while Verma was hit by some forty bullets. Rajan had been hit by three bullets in his back, leg and hand, but he managed to jump from the first floor and escape.

  The operation put Rajan on the defensive. He spent time recuperating in Smitivej Hospital, Bangkok, and on 24 November, escaped to Europe.

  Film producer Hanif Kadawala had realized long ago that he could be a target. After the initial killings, Kadawala had turned his house into a veritable fortress, and his office too had extensive security. But after he had allegedly paid Rajan Rs 2 crore to spare him, this had changed. On 7 February 2001, Kadawala could sit relaxed in his plush air-conditioned office at Bandra, and talk to the three unknown men who had come to talk about a business deal. Even the closed circuit television in his office was not in operation any more.

  An office boy stepped in and served tea. As the boy left and Kadawala picked up his teacup, one of the men abruptly rose and whipped out a revolver. Before Kadawala could utter a word, five bullets were pumped in him. The impact of the bullets threw his chair back. Tea splashed across the table and blood gushed out from several wounds. His eyes had remained opened with incredulity.

  The trio walked out of the office hastily. Soon they melted into the crowds on the streets of Bandra.

  It is said that Rajan had decided that he could not ignore Kadawala any more as any leniency to him diluted his claims of patriotism. Moreover, Kadawala was easy to get because the other blasts accused had become cautious.

  Within two months, Rajan allegedly ordered another hit from an undisclosed hideout in Europe. On 3 April 2001, Akbar Abu Sama Khan was killed at Dongri. The remaining accused were petrified. Police commissioner M.N. Singh refused to grant protection to them. Salim Kurla’s visitor Cablewala; Jindran’s friend Pandey; the ice vendor Rafi; Durrani’s lookalike Shaikh— none had been involved in the case at all but they had died. When two giants fight, the expendables are always the common people—like the people butchered in the riots or killed in the blasts, none of whom perhaps shared a fraction of the religious and political zeal of their so-called leaders.

  The common man will keep paying the price for the ambitions of his leaders.

  17

  Life after Death

  One of the most enduring images of the blast for many was the photograph in the Indian Express on 13 March: an injured man stumbling through the wreckage of the Air-India building, fear frozen on his dust-and blood-caked face.

  The man in the photograph was Brigadier G. Natarajan. Since his retirement from the Indian army in 1991—he had been an engineer in the Corps of Signals—he had been working at Tata Consultancy Services, one of India’s leading information technology companies. Five years earlier, in 1988, this clean-shaven, slightly built officer, now fifty-five years old, had seen the war from up close in the Indian Peacekeeping Force Operations in Sri Lanka, when he had set up a communications data-link there. He had seen suspected informers ‘necklaced’ with burning tyres by fanatical Tamil Tigers and hung from trees to die. He thought he would never forget the stench from the smouldering bodies.

  On 12 March, he left his office at the eleventh floor of the building to attend a post-lunch meeting. As he was walking past the elevators, he saw a wall of flame shooting towards him. ‘I felt an intense searing sensation and thought I had been thrust into the burning trunk of a car.’ In his delirium, he saw himself surrounded by monsters, who were leading him towards Yama, the god of death. ‘I fell at Yama’s feet and told him I needed six months more to complete my duties in this world.’

  After this, he vaguely remembers hearing voices identifying him. Before passing out he recalls mumbling his blood group, home phone numbers, and the medicines he was allergic to. Bleeding from the stomach, he was rushed to the Bombay Hospital some two kilometres away. Hospital records show that he was attended to at around 2.52 p.m. He stayed in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the hospital for the next week and has absolutely no recollection of what happened during those days.

  His wife Vasantha was informed of his plight at around 6 p.m. She was driven from their residence at Ghatkopar in Bombay’s eastern suburbs by a Muslim taxi driver, who first calmly drank a bottle of water to break his Ramazan fast and then drove her at record speed through the dense traffic. The ICU was stretched beyond capacity with twenty-three critically injured patients. Only four of them were to survive.

  Over the next few days, every few hours, the nurses would come out of the ICU and call out the names of the patients, Vasantha recalls. ‘We never knew whether it was for buying medicines or whether it was to tell us that they were dead.’

  A splinter had pierced Natarajan’s stomach and ruptured his intestine, over ten inches of which had to be cut out. His ears and face were filled with glass powder, and his eardrum was ruptured. Occasional splinters surface in his body even today. In 1996, he needed to have an MRI scan but could not because the magnetic shrapnel embedded in his skull would damage the machine. In 1998, he found that he couldn’t bend his left index finger. A tiny embedded metal piece was found to be the cause.

  Natarajan’s memory has diminished considerably. He believes he owes his survival to his army training,
and the generous help his firm gave him. After the blasts his personality changed and he became pessimistic and reclusive. But now he believes that the experience has made him stronger.

  The couple think of leaving the city, but never have. ‘The city is so indifferent at times but so helpful in a crisis,’ Vasantha says.

  For thirty-three-year-old Suryakant Parshuram Patil of the housekeeping department in the government-run Centaur Hotel near the domestic airport, 12 March had been like any other day.

  Towards the end of his shift, he was mopping a patch of oil fifteen feet from the lobby door, when there was a huge noise and some force propelled him face down on the marble floor. The last thing he remembered was a sensation of intense pain and of being surrounded by red.

  He woke up in the Nanavati Hospital the following morning. Flying glass had gouged a tennis-ball-sized hole in his right leg, exposing the bone beneath. There was a six-inch-long gash on his left shoulder blade and injuries on his head. It took a fortnight of painful treatment, stitches and skin grafts to put him together again. Over the years, the countless scars on his body, his inability to sleep on his left side and the weakness in his left arm have remained constant reminders of the blast. But what has been worse is the mental agony: loud noises, thunder and lightning turn him into a cowering wreck. He is now a fervent believer in God. There are huge portraits of Sai Baba and Ganapati in his home. ‘We light lamps every 12 March to thank Him for saving my husband’s life,’ says his wife Sudha.

  Suryakant still works at the Centaur, in the same lobby and corridors. ‘I have to,’ he says. ‘This is the best job I ever had.’ But he could not manage to go to work on 12 March until 1998. That, he felt, was the biggest step he had taken.

  Suryakant’s neighbour at the Gulmohar Society, a row of single-storeyed tenements behind the Tata Power Station at Magathane, Borivli, and his colleague in the housekeeping department at the Centaur is Sukhdev Laxman Zende, forty-eight. On the afternoon of 12 March 1993, he was on the first floor of the hotel, discussing the blasts that had ripped through southern Bombay, when he heard a loud noise from the end of the corridor and saw thick black smoke.